Sanskrit
संन्यासस्तु महाबाहो दुःखमाप्तुमयोगतः । योगयुक्तो मुनिर्ब्रह्म न चिरेणाधिगच्छति ॥
saṃnyāsas tu mahābāho duḥkham āptum ayogataḥ yogayukto munir brahma na cireṇādhigacchati
Translation
But without yoga, O mighty-armed, renunciation is hard to attain to; the yoga-harmonised Muni swiftly goeth to the Eternal.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
This is the qualification that makes sense of verse 2’s ranking: renunciation and yoga may lead to the same place, but renunciation attempted without the discipline of yoga is hard to sustain, while the yoga-harmonised sage reaches Brahman quickly. “Yoga” here isn’t opposed to renunciation — it’s the practical means of actually achieving it. This is essentially the same argument made about complete inaction elsewhere in the Gita’s earlier teaching, restated in the specific vocabulary of sannyasa versus yoga. Ayogataḥ — “without yoga” — is the operative word: bare renunciation with no practice behind it collapses back into BG 3.6’s fraud. Yoga is what makes the renouncing real rather than merely staged.
Study deeper
Word by word
- saṃnyāsas tu mahābāhoसंन्यासस् तु महाबाहो
- but renunciation, O mighty-armed (saṃnyāsaḥ + tu + mahā-bāho)
- duḥkham āptum ayogataḥदुःखं आप्तुं अयोगतः
- is hard to attain without yoga (duḥkham + āptum + ayogataḥ)
- yogayukto munir brahmaयोगयुक्तो मुनिः ब्रह्म
- the yoga-joined sage [reaches] Brahman (yoga-yuktaḥ + muniḥ + brahma)
- na cireṇādhigacchatiन चिरेणाधिगच्छति
- attains before long (na + cireṇa + adhigacchati)
Commentary
Site Commentary
Having just spent two verses (4-5) collapsing any real difference between renunciation and yoga, Krishna turns around in this one and reintroduces a difference — but a practical one, about difficulty of execution, not a metaphysical one about destination. The chapter’s argument isn’t a straight line; it keeps unifying and re-differentiating the same two things depending on whether the question at hand is where they end up or how hard they are to actually sustain.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- Two approaches to a goal can be equally valid in principle and still wildly unequal in how hard they are to sustain — don't let "they're both fine in theory" talk you out of picking the one you can actually keep doing.
Professional
- When two technical approaches both satisfy the requirements on paper, weigh operational difficulty as a real, separate axis — equivalent in outcome and equally practical to run are different claims, and conflating them means picking the harder path for no reason.
Family & Social
- When you and a partner debate two reasonable ways to handle something, remember that equally valid in principle doesn't mean equally sustainable for the two of you specifically — ask which one you can actually keep up before choosing.
Ask yourself
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